Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The neocortex figures importantly in human cognition, but it isnot the only locus of cognitive activities or even at the top of ahierarchy of cognitive processing areas in the central nervoussystem. Moreover, the form of information processingemployed in the neocortex is not representative of informationprocessing elsewhere in the nervous system. In this paper, wearticulate and argue against cortico-centrism in cognitivescience, contending instead that the nervous system constitutesa heterarchical network of diverse types of informationprocessing systems. To press this perspective, we examineneural information processing in both non-vertebrates andvertebrates, including examples of cognitive processing in thevertebrate hypothalamus and basal ganglia.